SYMBOLISM IN POE'S WORKS... I NEED HELP BADLY!!!

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I NEED TO HAND IN A 6 PAGE PAPER ABOUT SYMBOLISM IN POE'S WORKS. I OBVIOUSLY NEED A LOT OF HELP. PLEAS

-- Anonymous, May 14, 2002

Answers

As in a dream where all sensual perceptions derive from and express the emotions of the sleeper, so too does Poe's art use all elements within the story to express a single emiotn. Not a "meaning" per se, although Poe did use some sparing allegory(King Pest, Masque of the Red Death)but rather like a color that evokes a certain smell, taste, feeling.

A good place to start would be a story that shows explains and demonstrates this process such the Usher tale. He uses a core philosophical idea, that a place can be united intimately to a person and his fate entwined therein. Usher exists as a trinity of house, individual(Roderick) and a family line. Expanding further, the rotting grounds and the late autumn season, sick nature, the cracked house and still tarn awaiting some ruinous disturbance are the outer symbols. then we meet Usher in the same sad state physically and mentally. Then we move into the symbols of his MIND for a further symbolic relationship with that microcosm of desperate, decadent art. As the plot move so does the whole structure of symbol to final catastrophe where the symbols collapse inward upon themselves. There is even a good poem "The Haunted Palace" within the story as another poetic microcosm of symbols. As in a dream where you essentially frighten yourself by building up tension, so Usher encompasses his own doom by trying to escape in a story that ironically builds on his fears.(Same process of self-scaring as in The Raven and many other works). A veritable symphony of symbols depending on your choice and organization of a paper.

-- Anonymous, May 15, 2002


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